April 18, 2009

“Integrate”

In Germany there are sometimes headlines “Multiculturalism failed”, a coded phrase for “foreigners don’t integrate”.
When whites are anti-racist or pro multiculturalism most of them still consider themselves and their culture/way of life at the center, absorbing, “integrating” other culturs, where only the “cool” aspects are accepted. The not so hidden message is that most assume that so-called minorities just want to be accepted by the so-called majority.

And when white American anti-racists call for an end of white supremacy I am not so sure if they always truly think about what it means, that this is not just about ending racism within the US, but also ending world dominance.
With many white anti-racists one gets the impression that it is just about happily shaking hands together in “racial harmony” with a culture and way of life still “white” and with whites as the basic decision makers where “minorities” would have equal possibilities to participate in white(centered) rule.
Even with some sort of protection or recognition, like some “minorities” in Germany, the Sorbs for example, there is a constant and realistic threat of cultural annihilation and therefore the possibility of silent extermination of a people by influences from outside their group by mainstream culture.
In many or most cases historically discriminated “minorities” neither have the political nor the economic power to truly have an impact in mainstream politics and to get the necessary voice to live self-determination.
Regardless what one might think about Israel politics, Jews had the chance to leave Germany and didn’t have to integrate into a society which wanted to exterminate them.
This burden was placed on African Americans after slavery, a people was expected to integrate and to still accept white majority rule and dominance and oppression, which continues up to today.

Expected integration into the perpetrators group, can this truly work? On a psychological level as well as a human level? But also many white anti-racists expect exactly this. Ethnocide in the name of “tolerance”?